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Charlemagne
is said to contain his skull.]]Charlemagne (2 April 742-28 January 814), also known as Charles the Great or Carolus Magnus, was the King of the Franks from 768/771-814, succeeding Pepin the Short/Carloman and preceding Louis I, and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 800 to 814, preceding Louis I. Biography in 769]]Charlemagne, or Charles the Great was the son of Pepin, the first king of the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin's domains at his death covered most of present-day France, in addition to Belgium and parts of Germany. The sole ruler of this extensive kingdom from 771, Charlemagne was above all a war leader, expecting to take his army on campaign every year. He is reckoned to have carried out 30 campaigns in person in the course of his reign - to assert his authority, expand his domains, and forcibly spread the Christian faith. Charlemagne had no standing army and no bureaucracy, yet he achieved a high level of organization in the assembly and supply of his forces. His chief nobles, the counts, were responsible for raising the various troops that he needed, with equipment for each man. The soldiers brought some food with them, while additional supplies were requisitioned from landowners. The army typically assembled in the spring and summer and fought in the fall. Charlemagne always gathered intelligence on the region where he intended to fight and prepared careful plans. He usually divided his forces in two or more columns when advancing into hostile territory, presumably because a smaller body of men would find it easier to cope with problems ofmovement and supply. Pitched battles were rare, campaigns usually consisting of skirmishes, attacks on fortified settlements, resisting or avoiding ambushes, and much laying of waste to towns and countryside. Although in the first quarter-century of his reign Charlemagne commanded his army in person, he wasnot a ruler known for prowess in face-to-face combat. His real qualities lay in his leadership, organization, willpower, and ruthless persistence. Charlemagne fought his wars against mainly inferior opposition around his extensive borders, but even so success was not guaranteed. He faced tough resistance from insurgentsand his resources were overstretched against multiple enemies. Italian Control The campaign in which Charlemagne triumphed over the Lombard kingdom of north Italy in 773-73 exemplified decisive military action. After marching across the Alpine passes in two columns, the Franks who emerged on the north Italian plain were too numerous for the enemy to take on. Charlemagne came to a halt at the Lombard capital, Pavia, and laid siege to the city until it capitulated. Although further campaigns in Italy against the Lombards and the Byzantines were needed, the political settlement he imposed held firm, establishing Frankish control of the northern half of Italy. Campaigning in Iberia proved tougher. While most of Spain was under Muslim rule, divisions between the Arabs and the few, small Christian states that did exist gave Charlemagne an opportunity to intervene. But this resulting expedition to northern Spain in 778 was the worst disaster of his career. At the end of an unsuccessful foray to Zaragoza, he was leading his army back across the Pyrenees when the rearguard was ambushed and massacred at Roncesvalles. The death of prominent Frankish nobles in this attack provided material for a famous medievel epic poem, The Song of Roland. The incident was, in contrast, passed over in silence by Charlemagne's own chroniclers - it was embarrassing to have fallen into such a trap. Later in his reign, the Franks successfully occupied a defensive buffer zone south of the Pyrenees, including Barcelona. Saxon Rebels Most of Charlemagne's wars were directed across the open eastern frontier of his domains, above all against the Saxons. These independent, pagan people were repeatedly terrorized by Charlemagne's columns, but were always ready to rebel again when the Franks were distracted. Their resistance angered Charlemagne, who wasguilty of an appalling massacre of 4,500 Saxons at Verden in 782. The submission of the inspired guerrilla leader Widukind in 785 did not end resistance, but marked the point at which it could no longer succeed. By the 790s, Charlemagne had begun to delegate military operations to his sons or to nobles. He was not personally involved in destroying the Avar Khanate (nomads who dominated the Danube Valley), but he did plan to build a canal linking the Maine and Danube to facilitate the movement of his troops - an engineering task well beyond the Franks' abilities. By 800, when Charlemagne was crowned emperor by the pope, the era of annual campaigns was drawing to a close, as was his personal command of army operations. He had made his kingdom into an empire stretching as far south as central Italy and Barcelona, and as far east as the Elbe. Category:French Category:Franks Category:Kings Category:French kings Category:Frankish kings Category:German emperors Category:Germans Category:742 births Category:814 deaths Category:Catholics Category:West Frankish kings Category:West Franks